Is Streaming Doomed?

[Made in 1968]

There u go £3.5K better off

[Sherwood]

Every generation or so there is an attempt by the music industry to persuade us to re-purchase music we already bought in a new format. The latest model allows us to "rent" at modest cost from a near unlimited library. Whilst vinyl may persist as a "niche" market, I cannot see CDs surviving in the longer term as they have neither the "tangibility" or "nostalgic" lure of the former.

Personally, I cannot understand the negative attitude by some to streaming, though those not attracted to the model can carry on buying CDs or vinyl ..... for now! I still have a large vinyl collection and a huge cd collection but have gone over almost completely to streaming (either online or my own cd rips). A Tidal subscription allows me to listen to a huge amount of new material that I would never hear without the "rental model".

[Ashmore]

Personally, I cannot understand the negative attitude by some to streaming, though those not attracted to the model can carry on buying CDs or vinyl ..... for now! I still have a large vinyl collection and a huge cd collection but have gone over almost completely to streaming (either online or my own cd rips). A Tidal subscription allows me to listen to a huge amount of new material that I would never hear without the "rental model".

Well said. Ditto

[AJSki2fly]

Every generation or so there is an attempt by the music industry to persuade us to re-purchase music we already bought in a new format. The latest model allows us to "rent" at modest cost from a near unlimited library. Whilst vinyl may persist as a "niche" market, I cannot see CDs surviving in the longer term as they have neither the "tangibility" or "nostalgic" lure of the former.

Personally, I cannot understand the negative attitude by some to streaming, though those not attracted to the model can carry on buying CDs or vinyl ..... for now! I still have a large vinyl collection and a huge cd collection but have gone over almost completely to streaming (either online or my own cd rips). A Tidal subscription allows me to listen to a huge amount of new material that I would never hear without the "rental model".

Looking to the future when producing co2 as a result of producing energy (electricity) from whatever source, then electricity and its use may become very expensive and even elitist. Using a valuable power resources to run myriads of servers and storage devices around the world to support streaming of any sort may become too costly and even seen as a bad thing, people are already talking about digital carbon footprint. So back to home storage whether analogue or digital of some sort may be the future.

I did read somewhere that modern tech, mobile phones, computers, tablets, internet and networks was a vast energy consumer already and its may need to be focused on important stuff only in the future. That will be an interesting one to achieve.


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[Sherwood]

Looking to the future when producing co2 as a result of producing energy (electricity) from whatever source, then electricity and its use may become very expensive and even elitist. Using a valuable power resources to run myriads of servers and storage devices around the world to support streaming of any sort may become too costly and even seen as a bad thing, people are already talking about digital carbon footprint. So back to home storage whether analogue or digital of some sort may be the future.

I did read somewhere that modern tech, mobile phones, computers, tablets, internet and networks was a vast energy consumer already and its may need to be focused on important stuff only in the future. That will be an interesting one to achieve.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, servers do consume a lot of electricity but increasingly these will be powered by renewable sources. Iceland is developing a huge server industry based upon its abundant and largely "free" geothermal energy.

Contrast this with the financial and environmental cost of producing physical media such as vinyl and cds; the distribution costs of physical media; and the end of life disposal costs.

[AJSki2fly]

Yes, servers do consume a lot of electricity but increasingly these will be powered by renewable sources. Iceland is developing a huge server industry based upon its abundant and largely "free" geothermal energy.

Contrast this with the financial and environmental cost of producing physical media such as vinyl and cds; the distribution costs of physical media; and the end of life disposal costs.

I agree but even even creating energy from neutral sources has a carbon footprint from building it to maintenance and in the long term replacing it, I am not saying it isn't better than other forms of energy generation, but it is not necessarily clear cut. Also how efficient the Green generated power (electricity) is used is pretty important as well. I believe a recent study at an American university worked out the total carbon footprint of building a Tesla, maintaining it for 10 years, running it for 100K miles and then scraping it, and compared that with an equivalent petrol driven car, sadly the petrol car had the lower carbon footprint. At present in the UK we are around 50% green electricity generated for our current needs, I am not sure how long the forecast is to get to 100% but it is certainly quite a few years into the future. If you add to that +30 million electric cars then I think the amount of daily required generated electricity required is massively increased, so it will be interesting how and where a country like the UK will being getting its Electric power to support its needs.

Also I have been told that to produce one litre of ethanol for bio-fuel use produces a bigger carbon footprint than producing the same in petrol, so this implies ethanol as a additive to replace petrol is not such a great idea, apart form the fact that large organisations are destroying/burning vast swaths of forests(the lungs of the Earth) and planting cereals to then produce bio-fuels, this all seems a bit cock-eyed to me.

Don't get me wrong I don't think fossil fuel burning is the way forward I just don't think the right solutions have been thought through and the total environmental impacts. It is interesting how certain other technologies have been rubbished or resisted by large corporations as they probably would impact control and profits long term.

[Sherwood]

I agree but even even creating energy from neutral sources has a carbon footprint from building it to maintenance and in the long term replacing it, I am not saying it isn't better than other forms of energy generation, but it is not necessarily clear cut. Also how efficient the Green generated power (electricity) is used is pretty important as well. I believe a recent study at an American university worked out the total carbon footprint of building a Tesla, maintaining it for 10 years, running it for 100K miles and then scraping it, and compared that with an equivalent petrol driven car, sadly the petrol car had the lower carbon footprint. At present in the UK we are around 50% green electricity generated for our current needs, I am not sure how long the forecast is to get to 100% but it is certainly quite a few years into the future. If you add to that +30 million electric cars then I think the amount of daily required generated electricity required is massively increased, so it will be interesting how and where a country like the UK will being getting its Electric power to support its needs.

Also I have been told that to produce one litre of ethanol for bio-fuel use produces a bigger carbon footprint than producing the same in petrol, so this implies ethanol as a additive to replace petrol is not such a great idea, apart form the fact that large organisations are destroying/burning vast swaths of forests(the lungs of the Earth) and planting cereals to then produce bio-fuels, this all seems a bit cock-eyed to me.

Don't get me wrong I don't think fossil fuel burning is the way forward I just don't think the right solutions have been thought through and the total environmental impacts. It is interesting how certain other technologies have been rubbished or resisted by large corporations as they probably would impact control and profits long term.

Renewable technology is improving continuously and will eventually displace fossil fuels (if we survive that long!). However, I don't think that that energy consumption is a major impediment to streaming, even now.